Why You're Not Scaling Past $100 Million
The Challenge
You're running a $55 million construction company. Maybe you hit $65 million last year. You're turning down eight-figure projects because you don't have the capacity. Your best people look exhausted. You can't remember the last time you took three weeks off without everything back at the office needing you.
And here's the thing nobody wants to admit. You're still running your company like it's half the size it actually is.
I see this all the time with contractors in the $40 million to $75 million range. The owner is still deep in estimate reviews for projects under two million. Not just checking the final numbers, which makes sense because you're signing the check. But sitting through full review meetings, marking up line items, and getting into the details of every takeoff. Meanwhile, their leadership team is waiting on decisions that should have been made three days ago. Project pursuits are happening because someone said yes without anyone asking if it actually fits what the company does well or where it's trying to go.
The structure that got you from $15 million to $50 million is actively blocking you from hitting $100 million. Industry turnover is running at 68 percent right now. You're essentially rebuilding your entire workforce every 18 months while trying to scale. All that knowledge walking out. All that training investment is gone. And the companies that figured out the structure piece are taking the market share you're leaving on the table.
The Impact
This isn't a revenue problem. This is a structural crisis that's costing you in ways that don't show up on your P&L until it's too late.
When a company stays stuck in the $50 million to $70 million range for three or four years, the real cost isn't just the revenue you didn't capture. It's what happens to everything else. Your leadership team gets frustrated because they're not actually leading. They're just managing up and waiting for your approval. Your best people start quietly updating their resumes because talented professionals don't stick around when they can't make decisions. The culture you built starts cracking. People who used to love coming to work are now just collecting paychecks.
And it's crushing the owner personally. Missing family events because of project issues that someone else should have handled. Taking calls during dinner. Up at 4 am, dealing with problems that shouldn't be on your desk. Making great money on paper but feeling completely trapped by the business.
If you can't step away for three weeks without the company struggling, you don't own a business. You own an expensive job that's slowly taking over your life.
The financial hit compounds, too. A company stuck at $60 million for four years, when it should be growing at 15 percent annually, has left over $40 million in revenue on the table. But more than that, you've lost the chance to grab market share when your competitors were vulnerable. You've burned out good people who won't be there when you finally do figure this out. You've trained your team to wait on you instead of thinking for themselves.
The Shift
The companies that break through to $100 million and beyond make three moves that most owners resist until they're completely burned out.
First, they get incredibly honest AND clear about whether the people in leadership positions are actually capable of leading at scale. This isn't about loyalty. This isn't about who's been with you the longest or who's your best project manager. This is about competence for the role you need them to fill. At this point, they also need to know how to run a business, NOT just a project.
A great PM might be a terrible VP of Operations. Your most loyal superintendent might not have the business sense to run a division. The companies that scale stop promoting based on tenure or technical skill and start hiring and placing based on whether someone can actually build and lead systems AND people. When you get the right people in the right seats, things start moving faster. Decisions get made without you. Projects run smoothly. Your leadership team starts acting like leaders instead of glorified project managers waiting on your input.
Second, they create clear career paths that match what people actually want. Not everyone wants to manage other employees. Your top estimator might love the technical work and hate the idea of leading a team. That's not a problem if you build a structure where people can grow their compensation and influence through expertise instead of forcing them into management roles where they'll fail. When you get clear on each employee's fit for where the company is going, everything shifts. People stay because they see a future that fits them. Performance improves because they're in roles that match their strengths. Turnover drops because you stopped trying to jam square pegs into round holes.
Third, they get strategic about project pursuit. Every project you chase costs time, energy, and resources. The companies that scale stop saying yes to everything and start asking whether a project aligns with their core strengths and future direction. This means sometimes walking away from work that doesn't fit, even when the number looks good. It means having clear criteria for what you pursue and what you pass on. When you get disciplined about this, your win rate goes up, your margins improve, and your team isn't scattered across project types that pull you in ten different directions.
These shifts aren't comfortable. You have to trust people before it feels safe. You have to say no to revenue that looks tempting. You have to have hard conversations about whether someone is actually capable of growing with the company. But the ROI shows up fast. We're talking quarters, not years.
The Closing
The leader of a $100 million company needs to be different from the person who built it to $50 million. You didn't stop being a builder when you became an owner. You just started building at a different scale. Everything you want is on the other side of the structural changes you've been avoiding.
The companies that break through don't have better people or easier markets. They have a better structure. They've made the uncomfortable decisions about roles and people, and projects. They've built systems that let the business run without the owner being the center of every decision.
They are also willing to have the hard conversations with employees, that is so critical to building a culture of accountability and high-performance teams.
Your company is ready to scale. The real question is whether you're ready to become the leader that the company needs. Most contractors will read this, recognize themselves in every paragraph, and then change nothing. They'll keep grinding. Keep being the bottleneck. Keep wondering why $100 million feels impossible. Don't be that contractor. The business you want to build is waiting on the other side of the decisions you've been putting off.
Gerard Aliberti
Pro-Accel, Owner
If breaking through to $100 million feels like it should have happened already and you're trying to figure out what's actually blocking you, let's talk about the structural pieces that need to shift. Executive coaching is where the real work happens because when you change how you lead and build, everything else changes with it. Reach out to jerry@pro-accel.com and let's map out what needs to change.
Webinar Announcement!!
On November 13th at 11:00 a.m. EST, I’ll be joining forces with Patrick Shurney, Financial Coach and Owner of 3P Consulting, to host "From Builder to CEO", a paid masterclass that brings the financial and operational sides of contracting together.
This 90-minute session is built for contractors in the $5M–$100M range who want actionable steps, real deliverables, and immediate ROI. We’ll cover how to align your numbers and operations so you can step out of builder mode and into CEO mode.
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